Intrapreneur, author (CALM, Good Men Project), coach (Gallup Strengths), teacher (Business, Economics), Head of Sixth Form, and Head of Psychology.

Friday, January 11, 2008

MTV makes me wanna smoke crack

The mammoth musical monolith that is MTV.

Music television...

...it sucks. Badly.

Its corporatised, homogenising, nonsense is rotting the brains of everyone.

And THEY DON'T PLAY ANY FUCKING MUSIC! I THOUGHT THAT WAS THE WHOLE POINT?

I remember and cherish the time when I could actually turn on MTV and see music...it was a revelation - music 24-7 - a whole video...wow!

Now it's full of truly shit reality TV. Ah - but this is the corporate money-making age. Where there are millions to be made selling the celebrity to the brain-dead masses...but not just everyone...oh no - different groups of brain-dead masses.

First came the inevitable geographical divide...MTV Europe...MTV UK...

Then the splintering of genres (according to some Viacom marketing exec and his research...I can imagine it 'focus groups of 18-24 year old teenagers show...) so now we end up with:MTV One: for brain-dead teenagers (yes it may show South Park and Strutter, but the humour is waaaaay beyond the dumb-ass audience)MTV Two: brain-dead, 'white-emo' boys...who are desperate to be different from everyone, but still contribute to money-making monolithMTV Base: brain dead black people and white people who want to be blackMTV Hits: pop for the generally brain dead...perhaps the bored housewives?MTV Dance: something for the weekend? Getting ready for a drugged up night out?

Ah - I hear you VH1 viewers - you're above this right?

Wrong - guess who owns VH1? It's a sister channel of MTV.

Nice...for Viacom...

Live music is where it's at...live music and recommendations from interesting people...that's what I think is the best source of finding out about music...not that the radio isn't interesting...I only listen to C(r)apital Radio for Johnny Vaughn - I think he's hilarious in the mornings.

But where else is there to find out about new music? Myspace? YouTube? I'm not sure.